FBI talked to older Boston suspect

The Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings two years ago about his ties to extremist groups, POLITICO has confirmed.

The FBI said the interview of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, came at the request of a foreign government. The FBI found nothing “derogatory.” Police took into custody the younger brother and suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, after a stand-off in Watertown, Mass., on Friday night. He was sent to the hospital. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died early Friday morning following a shootout with police.

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Their father, Anzor Tsarnaev, told the Wall Street Journal that he was with Tamerlan Tsarnaev during the FBI interview, which he said took place in Cambridge.

“They said: We know what sites you are on, we know where you are calling, we know everything about you. Everything,” he told the Journal. “They said we are checking and watching—that’s what they said.”

But Anzor Tsarnaev said he was confident in his children, despite the FBI’s interest.

“I knew what he was doing, where he was going. I raised my children right,” he said in the interview.

In an interview on Friday on CNN, the suspects’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, also said the FBI had been keeping tabs on her son.

“Tamerlan was counseled by FBI for three, five years,” she said. “They knew what my son was doing. They knew what actions and what sites on the Internet he was going. How could this happen? How could they — they were following every step of him and they’re telling today this is a terrorist act.”